As things will not change in Fedora and my arguments were not accepted by the Meritocrats of Fedora my decision is final that I will longer promote the use of Fedora or install it on my customers computers. It took me a long time to make this final decision – The final decision came with a talk with a customer of mine, where I was not convinced enough to tell him that he should install Fedora. I hate to make this cut but I see no other choice because the basic of my choice are the possibilty to contribute to a free software project. If this is not possible I rather choose another. This is because if I can not contribute I can not influence the direction. And then I can not work in my customers interest. I hate to do this cut because I was quite satisfied with the technical aspects. I fee a bit like I left MacOS /Apple 1998 where I also felt that it had some nice points but that it was not based on Unix, was not build for cheap i386 platform and was not free. Things have changed and Apple made some things better than they were 1998 (well I think the GUI was better back then, than nowadays). So I guess this mean that some time next year I will have to make a complete backup of my new 160 GB disk or buy a new one. What to put on than? I am thining about these choices:

Umm, anybody wants to comment on one or all of these options? (No, I am not going to take Gentoo, FreeBSD, Debian or Mandriva into account) Would be happy to hear some new arguments. What I find interesting is rPath – somebody had mentioned that for creating live cds. I think their concepts sound interesting. This distributed thingy that also Mercurial does has large potential. I think this “RELEASE” thing is rather outdated. You see this with Debian: Some seem really to use Debian stable. But really who is so silly to use GNOME 2.8? So the directions is clear – that users want a mix of modernity and stability. Best is if they can choose – They might want the most stable Apache web server but the latest Evolution mailer. Every user or organisation has its own profile. And rather than having a dozen distros the user should be able to mix like he wants without having to switch.

What else is important? I want a distro where there is room for engagement and where I can go and promote this distro without having to fear to be sued because I am not an “official” represantative or without being able to contribute without signing a CLA.

I use Linux because I want freedom – and I rather like distros telling me: You want that – do it – we look at it and if its good we thankfully take your contribution – no agreements – no buzzwords – just community and understanding. This might make some lawyers unemployed but i am noit using Linux to make THEM happy. As Creative Commons states: “This is how you skip the intermediaries” – free licenses should be really about THAT not having lawyers hanging around to be asked,…(argh)

Those who know me a little know that I really was kind of an unofficial Fedora advovate – but there is no going back because I have tried multiple times but meritocracy works differently. In a meritocracy you have to show your commitment and it gives those power and only listens to those who have earned a reputation in a defined community. Thats’s my impression – arguments are not counting much – reputation does a lot. Unfortunately meritocracy is a very popular concept in free software. I am not saying that it is not ok if good people make good decisions, but I think that one should always try to make a community where one strives equalness of all users – where only some do more or decide more – but not because they are “leaders”, but because someone needs to decide and to make this democratic is not more just than if somebody tries to collect a rough consensus in order to move forward. I think “leadership” is the wrong way, because this leads people to become followers and not getting active. A good community activates its members and also outsiders. The problem with leadership is that if only few people have to decide they have a lot of power that can be either abused – or – if they get ill or do something different a whole projects can be in danger. You can see this all over projects, also in democratic ones like Debian, because they elect leaders and those then have these powers – or they get bought by Ubuntu ;).

The great thing about rPath or any of its derivatives (Foresight is a great example) is that if there is something you don’t like, its very simple to change it yourself. rBuilder Online (http://www.rpath.org) will give you free hosting for your derivative project, whether its just adding a few things, or an entirely new distro.